Who Are the Owners?

WALL . STREET

When G. Keith Funston resigned the presidency of Connecticut's Trinity College twelve months ago to become president of the New York Stock Exchange, he frankly confessed that he did not know much about the stock market. But when he asked the professionals the question "Who owns stocks?", he found that they did not have the answer either. So Funston persuaded the Exchange to hire the Brookings Institution to find out who does own the 5 billion shares of stock in the 2,300 companies listed on the nation's 20 exchanges and in the 2,700 companies with unlisted stocks. Last week, in a 140-page study (Share Ownership in the United States), Brookings reported:

P: There are 6,500,000 individual owners of public stock issues in the U.S.; they own an average of 4.1 separate issues.

P: Men own slightly more than four shares for every three held by women,

P: There is a direct relationship between education and stock ownership. Only 7 1/2% of high-school graduates own stock, compared to 18% of college graduates.

P: In the $10,000-and-over income bracket, 55% own stock; in the $5,000-$10,000 range 20%; in the $4,000-$5,000 bracket 7%. One surprise: among 10 million families with less than $2,000 income, 200,000 (2%) own shares.

P: More than a fifth of all U.S. shareholders are in New York State, followed (in order) by Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Massachusetts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.